MERLE HAGGARD - SING ME BACK HOME

SING ME BACK HOME

MERLE HAGGARD

SONGWRITER: MERLE HAGGARD

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: THE STRANGER, MERLE HAGGARD

LABEL: CAPITOL RECORDS

GENRE: COUNTRY

YEAR: 1968

 

          Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was an American country singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler.

           Haggard was born in Oildale, California, during the Great Depression. His childhood was troubled after the death of his father, and he was incarcerated several times in his youth. After being released from San Quentin State Prison in 1960, he managed to turn his life around and launch a successful country music career. He gained popularity with his songs about the working class that occasionally contained conformist and jingoistic themes contrary to the prevailing anti-Vietnam War sentiment of much popular music of the time. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number-one hits on the US country charts, several of which also made the Billboard all-genre singles chart. Haggard continued to release successful albums into the 2000s.

       He received many honors and awards for his music, including a Kennedy Center Honor (2010), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2006), a BMI Icon Award (2006), and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), Country Music Hall of Fame (1994) and Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame (1997). He died on April 6, 2016—his 79th birthday—at his ranch in Shasta County, California, having recently suffered from double pneumonia.

            This is a song about a prisoner taking the last walk to execution. Haggard did time in San Quentin, and the inspiration for the song comes from his friendship with a fellow inmate named “Rabbit”, who took just such a walk.

           Sing Me Back Home is the fifth studio album by American country singer and songwriter Merle Haggard and The Strangers, released in 1968 on Capitol Records.

The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom

I stood up to say good-bye like all the rest

And I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cell

'Let my guitar playing friend do my request.' (Let him...)

 

Sing me back home with a song I used to hear

Make my old memories come alive

Take me away and turn back the years

Sing Me Back Home before I die

 

I recall last Sunday morning a choir from 'cross the street

Came to sing a few old gospel songs

And I heard him tell the singers 'There's a song my mama sang.

Can I hear once before we move along?' 

Sing me back home, the song my mama sang

Make my old memories come alive

Take me away and turn back the years

Sing Me Back Home before I die

Sing Me Back Home before I die.